Voice, Lace patterns for Music Box and hand bobbin lace makers.

An extract from a live performance at Nottingham Contemporary, March 2016, part of the opening event of the Simon Starling retrospective exhibition.  The performance - a celebration of textile making and song - was created especially for the evening, and was the first time Mann and Littler had collaborated. It featured a selection of textile work songs: lace tells, waulking songs, and luddite protest songs alongside field recordings of spanish bobbin lace makers, framework knitting machines; jacquard punch card lace patterns played through a music box and interwoven with all manner of curious homemade instruments.
O' Pello Pello - A rendition of the famous traditional Basque song "Oi Pello Pello". First collected in Cancionero Popular Vasco in 1918, the song was popularized by singer - songwriter Mikel Laboa, founder of "Ez Dok Amairu".

The song is about a tired spinster who asks "Pello", her cruel boss or husband, if she may stop working and go to bed. He keeps telling her to carry on with the next step in the spinning process, until the sun comes up and it is too late to go to sleep.

Nathaniel learned the song as part of a performance for the opening of the exhibition "The Margins of the Factory" by Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum. Nathan sings it to a video showing men and women at work in the Lea Artibai region in Basque Country, where they trim rubber parts destined for the global automobile industry. While singing, he manually assembles a device which broadcasts his prerecorded voice to a transistor radio, with which he then performs a moving duet. You can see more of that performance here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l_42JrIn5o

Lace makers - recorded at the "Encuentro Nacional de Encaje de Bolillos" Roa Del Duero, Burgos Spain, 2008. 

With thanks to everyone at Nottingham Contemporary for inviting us to perform together.

O' Pello Pello (live) - Nathaniel Mann and David Littler

sonic visual artist and curator. UK.
http://davidlittler.tumblr.com
sampler-cultureclash collective www.samplercultureclash.org.uk